We have found that the Real Player plugin, which is used by the BBC Radio Player, may or may not function fully depending on a combination of what flavour of unix/linux you are using, which browser you are using, which version of browser you are using, and which version of GCC built the plugin during installation.

You may find that you are only able to listen to live radio using the Listen using stand-alone Real Player link.

You can help us improve our unix/linux advice.

Installation guide
The BBC is not responsible for any changes you may decide to make to your computer set-up. The following is intended as a guide only to help you diagnose any problem you may be having.

Many users have emailed us how they got things working on their system:

• Many users have found that they were able to use the BBC Radio Player after installing Real Player 10.
• The files nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt must be in the browser's plugins directory for Opera, Firefox and Mozilla
• You may need to log out and back in again before the changes work.
• Some users have commented that they had to install the player and plugins as root. As root, in plugins directory, make soft links to nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt ("ln -fs /opt/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so /opt/firefox/plugins/nphelix.so" . Same for nphelix.xpt). Add whichever user(s) want to listen to group "audio" in /etc/group (more secure than giving world permissions to /dev/[sound device, ex. dsp]
• One user has said that when running on a non-root area, disabling artsd got it working
• One user has said that using the command artsdsp /usr/bin/realplay got it working
• One user found using the command ln -s /home/me/applications/RealPlayer10/realplay /usr/bin/realplay got it working
• A user on Suse 9.1 Professional found that the most recent update (0.9.3-1.2-i586) got the plugin working.
• A user found that making sure the 'realplay' binary is in the PATH when FireFox starts up got things working.

More help from around the web
Helix community forums: https://helixcommunity.org/forum/?group_id=154
Provides information about Real Player 8, 10 and the Helix Player.

The now closed Real Forums http://realforum.real.com/cgi-bin/unixplayer/wwwthreads.pl also contain useful past discussions about Real Player 8.

Mozilla
For more information on plugins for Mozilla-based browsers, see http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html#RealPlayer

You can check which plugins you have installed by going to About:Plugins, or by going to http://wp.netscape.com/plugins/manager.html

Opera
For more information on plugins for Opera, You can check which plugins you have installed by going to Opera:Plugins.
Opera's support site at http://www.opera.com/support/service/plugins/index.dml?platform=linux contains more information about plugins on Linux/Opera.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

How you can help us
If you would like to help us compile a list of known working versions, please send us the following information:

Platform:

e.g. Linux/Mandrake 9. Please correct if necessary.

Browser:

e.g. Mozilla 1.3 Auto-check your browser. Please correct if necessary.

Media Player:
Please select Real Player 8 Real Player 10 Helix
NB - many users found installing Real Player 10 got the Radio Player working on their system.

GCC version:
Please select GCC 2 GCC 3 Other I don't know what this is

Can you:
Listen to the shows and the control buttons, like pause, work
Listen to the shows, but the control buttons don't work
Listen only using the stand-alone Real Player
Not listen to anything, either in Real Player or Radio Player

Do you have any other comments?


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Useful links:
Radio Audio Help
Radio 1 Audio/video
Radio 4 Listen Again
Radio 1's audio guide
Radio 2's audio guide
Radio 4's audio guide
Five Live's audio guide
WebWise guide